


Terms of Engagement

by countessofbiscuit



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Republic Commando Series - Karen Traviss, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Behavior, Clubbing, Explicit Sexual Content, Extra Overgrown Teenagers, Fi's Big Mouth Meets Sev's Praise Kink, First Time, Handcuffs, Intersquad Beef, M/M, Organized Crime, Questionable lube, Relationship Negotiation, Triple Zero, Verbal Sparring, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-12-01 18:55:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20866928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/countessofbiscuit/pseuds/countessofbiscuit
Summary: "Sev may be the one to eat peppers and spit acid, but I make the boom. And if you fuck him up, you'll find yourself on the wrong side of the blast wave,ner vod… But you can give him hell about the wind, from the brother who always had to share his tent. More than once thought the bivvy sack would be my body bag."- RC-1262 to RC-8015, in the ‘freshers at Qibbu’s Hut





	Terms of Engagement

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WritingCyan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritingCyan/gifts).

> A sequel to [Red Watch.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14795726)

**Safe house, Brewery zone, Coruscant Quadrant J-47, 2210 hours, 387 days after Geonosis**

This was some pure _osik,_ in Sev’s none-too-fine opinion. 

Two days after greasing a score of Sep terrorists and having a right FIBUA party, it was back to sitting around in civvies in a strange apartment, watching the world go by. _B for Boring._ They were supposed to have decamped from Qibbu’s penthouse to Arca Barracks for a rare stint of sleep, PT, more sleep, and resetting to factory settings on the sim range—just a commando, his Deece, and his squad, all order in the galaxy restored. 

But Skirata had promised his Mongrels a run ashore, and he wouldn’t let Delta off his leash either. When they moaned to Sergeant Vau, he just shrugged and said something about plausible deniability, offering his _guesthouse_ to wash the team’s alibi for a few more days. Sev didn’t think he’d mind if the entire Grand Army knew who’d saved their skins. But official success in the CoruFresh raid implicated them in a lot of unofficial procurement—kit, intelligence, explosives, credits—so they’d grudgingly traded in one awkward bolt-hole for another. 

Though it was much nicer than the Hutt’s place, boasting polished stone surfaces, indirect light sources, and functioning freshers, it still smelled strongly of bleach. Sev was getting a headache.

“Why can’t we just grab her like we’ve grabbed all the others?” he asked of the room, petulantly, without looking up from his scope. 

By _her,_ he meant the Twi’lek dancer who may or may not have played host to a Separatist spy ring in the tender underbelly of the Republic’s bureaucratic district. Sev quite enjoyed an abduction; the prospect of another one could turn this whole evening around.

“Yeah, and if she plays ball, she can have one of us fine leftovers as compensation for the trouble,” said Scorch, who had been taking on Fixer in a delicate game of pick-a-stick for the past hour. 

Some pages of a holozine rustled in agitation. “That’s not how picking up girls works, whatever Vau taught you.” _Niner._ He was the only member of Omega squad not soft and easily distracted, and so the only member present that evening. Sev didn’t count Fi, though he was around too, because Fi distracted himself. He thought too much and talked even more. 

“Worked for Ordo,” said Fixer. 

“That’s ‘cause Ordo accessorizes,” Corr countered. Skirata’s latest adopted stray was doing that weird trick of sharpening vibroblades on his durasteel knuckles. The intermittent _tscha-tscha_ sound scraped at Sev’s patience as he contemplated murder in cold blood. 

The fashionable captain in question was leaning up against the countertop, arms crossed tightly with balled fists and three dessicated juice boxes at his elbow. There was no sign that the jabs had landed, or that Sev’s peevish question was getting an answer. They had all grown more comfortable around Ordo these past couple weeks. And something about sitting in Vau’s apartment, where he’d had some frank _conversations_ with Separatist scum and probably tossed a few fingers to Mird, felt like being on their own turf. 

_But not too comfortable. The Nulls are more psychotic than me, Vau said so._

And Sev had an uncanny, unshakeable feeling that Ordo knew all about what he’d done to Fi’s mouth a few nights back. 

Ordo was still around because there was also the time-sensitive matter of slushing the terrorists’ funds from Skirata’s Aargau account. It turned out Mereel had a little hearts-and-minds initiative of his own, something to do with this inconvenient cluster point on their Galactic City holochart: a puzzling pool of red light—feedback from Jusik’s Dust—in the Clone Zone, a hop, skip and a jump away from Republic HQ. Mereel had done a quick recce himself, singled out this dodgy but entrepreneurial dancer, and quietly had Corr scrub the location from the list of house calls they’d handed to Obrim. This wasn’t one for the CSF. 

Almost the entirety of Sev’s understanding of the situation came from a comment Mereel had made over roba nuggets, so offhand it may as well have been a suggestion to go for jerba dip over blue sauce. 

_Deny the Seps an RV point, plug some holes, boost morale among the whitejobs, and provide steady employment for the downtrodden. As long as Kal’buir never finds out we’re cleaning credits between the thighs of ladies of ill-repute, it’s a solid investment. You in,_ Ord’ika?

Ordo was very much in, more so than Sev had expected for someone whose head had been turned by some Treasury tail. These Nulls were just full of surprises—up to and including Mereel volunteering Sev and Fi as the heavies for Ordo’s first contact with the dancer. 

_Why am I surprised? Fi told Ordo. Ordo told Mereel. And now Mereel is having a laugh._

“Ordo won’t need to grab anyone.” Boss wasn’t as asleep as he looked. “Not with the credit chips he’s got in those pockets.” 

“You’re not supposed to _buy_ them either,” Niner groaned. “At least not with Skirata’s money, he’ll go mental.”

Ordo finally cracked. “Shut it. We’re not buying, stealing, or slotting anyone. She’s cooperating, and we’re giving her a compelling reason to continue. Agent Wennen can only do so much.” That seemed to stick in Ordo’s craw. 

“Then you don’t need two of us,” Sev groused. “Just take Fi.”

“Mereel says you need the socialization.”

Sev sighed and turned back to the window. He fiddled some more with his scope. A thousand meters below, a Nautolan was hawking something on the pavement, and Sev wouldn’t be happy until he could count their tentacles with confidence. He fancied it was someone important and dodgy—maybe a Sep-leaning Senator—and how satisfied Vau would be if he snapped them right here. Assassinations, not assignations, were more Sev’s speed. 

He told himself his itch to pull the trigger was boredom and not animal panic to save himself from a night out with Fi. 

“Don’t look, Niner. You’ll get a migraine,” Scorch said, suddenly. 

Sev turned around again. 

Fi was standing in a bedroom door, looking not so much like a man about town as an absolute, unabashed _di’kut._

His grey sweats were inoffensive enough, if on the tight side and two sizes too short, cinched up around his shins. But his bold pink top, with gaping armholes, frayed edges, and a representation of some strange avian arranged in microscopic, reflective washers, was beyond absurd. 

Fi also exuded a new easy confidence in the civvie getup that made Sev’s face warm. 

“Where did you get that?” Niner asked. He looked more resigned than alarmed. 

“Found it.” Fi cocked his brows with pride and spun his brimmed sports hat around to display a crude word for someone who solicited a certain kind of attention for credits. Fi _found_ a lot of things. Sev was about to ask if he’d gone shopping on another tail again, but his guilty conscience made every question sound incriminating. “Mereel left behind his Galactic City trunk show. It’s _kandosii_.”

“You couldn’t find something for Sev, too?” Ordo gestured to where Sev sat bunched up on his stool in chunky flightsuit bottoms and a utilitarian jacket. Its only concession to fashion was a fur hood, and Sev didn’t like it. It reminded him of the only furry creature he’d spent any time around: Mird. The sensation of the strill coiled around his neck made his skin crawl.

Fi just grinned like a man about to let everyone in on a salacious joke. “No, I did.” He moved towards Sev with both hands down the back of his sweats, adjusting something. “Sev just doesn’t want to be mistaken for someone who’s ever had fun.”

He punctuated _fun_ with a deliberate _snap!_ of elasticene, his eyes never leaving Sev’s for a second, and Sev knew with certainty that this evening was going to be nothing short of absolute _haran._

He wanted to growl. He wanted to jump out the window. He wanted to squeeze Fi by his stupid _rigging_ till he was too red in the face to insinuate another thing. 

That was the problem with Fi, though. Sev had broken once, _once,_ letting Fi suck him off in a moment of weakness, and now that Fi had gotten a taste he’d never stop gnawing, like those critters from Qiilura he was always going on about. Sev’s near-death experience and rabid tantrum had only frightened Fi off for a rotation or two. He was bolder now, coming in for the kill. 

_You don’t have to be perfect every time, you only have to be stupid once._

That particular kernel of wisdom was the worse for being one of Skirata’s. If Sev _had_ been perfect every time like Vau demanded, he wouldn’t be sitting among brothers after a successful op expecting to be skinned for getting handsy—for getting _soft_—for doing something so non-regulation the regs didn’t even see fit to define it. _Fraternization._ They were supposed to know what that meant; Sev figured it was anything they wouldn’t want Vau watching. _You’re soldiers, boys. You’ll do yourself no favours by dropping your plates. Save it for after you win the war, or you might lose something you’ll miss._

“This isn’t supposed to be _fun_,” Sev hissed. “How are you going to be any _shabla_ use in that?”

Fi rolled his shoulders, cracked his neck, and stretched his bare arms theatrically, showing off a tattoo on his bicep—MOM—that Sev wasn’t sure was temporary. “We’re the muscle, aren’t we? One of us should look convincing. So stop worrying about what I’ve got down my pants.” Fi would’ve taken any reaction as an invitation to wind Sev up more, but a blank stare was no deterrent, either. Omega’s sniper just twisted the dial on Sev’s sight with a smile like a tooka on spice and purred. “Or _don’t_.”

Sev ground his teeth and saw red. 

“Well now that you’re decent, let’s move,” said Ordo, as he hauled open the door. 

Fi grinned. “Ready to roll, _Sev’ika?_” 

Sev pushed off the stool. “Don’t call me that.” He shoved past Fi with his Deece, which he wasn’t allowed to bring on this field trip, and tossed it to Scorch, who caught it on reflex. 

_Scorch gets me. And he has a mouth. Why the_ shab _did I unzip myself for this moron?_

“Don’t wait up for us, dears,” Fi said with a wave to the room. 

Sev tried hard, very hard, not to think about what Fi had down his pants. It was like trying not to imagine blue banthas. 

As they made their way out into the mild Coruscant evening, Ordo fussed at the fabric hood around his neck, preening it up around his ears, betraying how uncomfortable he was plainclothes, too. Fi seemed to be the only one at ease. Sev used to think the Mongrel just mainlined stims all day, but no: that was just how Fi was. A week ago, Sev, for all his confidence, would have protested at going out on an assignment without his kit and helmet. But his only real brush with mortality since this op began had been bad luck and Fi’s bad influence. Not even Mark-II Katarn could save him if he kissed permacrete from Coruscant heights. He wasn’t happy about it, but he was also less concerned about his bare skull and lack of sensors. The twin Verpine pistols stuffed in his inside jacket pockets and his complete faith in his commando specs and specialisms went some way towards a spirit of invincibility. 

The speeder parked on the platform was the same one they’d used a few days earlier, now stripped of the taxi accessories that had looked so inviting to a careless and jumpy Vinna Jiss. The window was still ajar from when Sev had shoved the business end of his grenade launcher out the rear to turn some gangsters into smoked chips.

Fi’s mind tended in the same direction. Of course it did. They shared one-hundred percent of their DNA, roughly eighty-percent of their upbringing, and one-hundred-and-ten percent of the thrill of that active reconnaissance in the retail quadrant—and everything that happened after.

“Look, Sev, it’s our snatch-n-grab speedie. Maybe Ordo has something fun planned for us after all.”

“Don’t count on it.”

“The tank is always half-full, _ner vod._ She might bring friends.” 

“Their funeral.” Sev pulled out his Verps and began calibrating their magnetic fields for close-quarters, more out of habit than any real expectation that he’d get to use them. “Or Scorch. Same thing.” 

“Ordo, this place better have good bar snacks or Sev really will go spare. Hot nuts or something.” 

“Sev can have whatever he wants as long as he doesn’t scare the patrons.” Ordo revved the engine and adjusted the rear-view mirror to somewhere below Wookiee and above jumped-up Padawan. “Just stay away from me and look casual.”

Fi shook his head. “Don’t ask him to do that, he might break something.”

“I am _right here_,” Sev said on a groan, wishing he were anywhere else. 

The speeder fell quiet as they merged from a residential skylane into a dense stream of traffic. It was short-lived. Sev had just begun running through the exits and lines-of-sight he’d seen from the holoplans of their destination—a random club in the sprawling theatre district—when Fi got bored. 

“Does Mereel really think this dancer is a spy? Or does he just want you to put the fear of Fett into the lady so she manages our pension fund without too many questions?”

“He doesn’t,” Ordo said, “but there’s nothing wrong with a second opinion.” 

Sev scoffed. “Yeah, about which end to pick before you start breaking every bone.” 

“Not the wiggly end, that’s for sure. Twi’lek jelly wouldn’t come out of this shirt. I should know.” Fi suffered the silence for only a few beats, then he piped up again, louder this time for Ordo’s benefit. “I hope she knows what you’re wearing, _ner vod,_ because you two just look like my glum body-doubles.” 

“_Fierfek,_” Sev hissed, “I’ve had this throbbing knot in my skull for weeks now, ever since we intercepted some shoddy, mouthy, _mongrel_ cargo off the Corellian Run.” 

Fi made sympathetic eyes at him. “Might want to get that checked out.” 

“Nothing an old-fashioned cranial blow won’t shake. Your distracted demolitions man will do a bang-up job one day.”

“Dar never set his sergeant’s eyebrows on fire.” 

Sev wanted to retort with something about improving Skirata’s looks. But with precious _Ord’ika_ at the helm, he thought better of it, and Fi carried on his line of enquiry with the captain. That was one good thing about Fi: he wasn’t out to score points.

_Just score._

_Hells, he’s getting to me, the_ shab’ika.

“I’m just surprised Mereel is farming out some of the creative accounting functions of Skirata Inc,” Fi said. It was plain to Sev that this was Null business, and he was content not to know specifics—he suspected he’d sleep better—but Fi couldn’t stop needling. “Jaing’s good at that, I hear.” 

“We’re diversifying our portfolio. No one should think they are above multiple points of failure,” Ordo replied. 

“Well, it was very kind of those Seps to hole up in a naughty club. Mereel might’ve decided to invest in a used air-scrubber shop, and I don’t plan on retiring to a nine-to-five.” 

“Don’t worry, _F’ika._ You’ve been talent-spotted for Sundari’s clown show of a court.” 

“_Brilliant._ I love sabotage and fancy dress.”

“He means as a jester, you barve,” said Sev. 

Fi let out a dramatic sigh. “They wouldn’t appreciate my highbrow Mando humor.” 

Their speeder droned through a district lined with brightly-lit shops, empty except for solitary synthflesh mannequins displaying gowns or robes that probably cost more than Sev’s Katarn. He’d learned a thing or two about property tax and surface-level square-footage on this protracted operation. Delta lived four to a crate and had never been allowed much of anything—space, consumables, taxpayer credits. Sev wouldn’t have changed that for the galaxy, not even to save himself from Fixer’s snoring, but it did strike him as unfair that they were only let out of the box to put their _shebse_ on the line for the same Republic citizens who bundled up their embroidered sleeves and shuffled out of offices, tapcafs, and freshers whenever his brothers walked in. 

Sev always waited for their hems to catch on the way out. They never did. 

They drifted slowly through a bad patch of theatre hour traffic. As Sev looked out on Galactic City, he wondered why he suddenly felt pinched, considered that it was probably from spending too much time around Fi, and tried to shake off the feeling. Then, in the way of abstract thought, some unrelated question presented itself again, freshly cut and clearer. 

“How long do you reckon before Jusik’s Dust sloughed off the Seps’ clothes?”

Ordo wasn’t quick to respond, as if Sev’s curiosity surprised him. “A couple days at least, depending on contact.”

“So if they were clustering in a … in a place like _that,_ does that mean Corr’s also got a list of their closest lady friends?”

“And they say you’re all brawn and blaster. Well done, RC-1207.” Sev let Ordo’s sarcasm slide; it was how the Nulls showed affection or something. “Now you see why cooperation is important. Corr almost lost two marks at that location, which means they shed a lot of Dust fast, even with the full-frontal.” Fi giggled. Ordo ignored him. “More red dots left than arrived, with fainter signals, so some employees didn’t change out of their uniforms. Our contact may have some names.” 

“Ooh, a shopping list! Hear that, _Sev’ika?_”

“_Udesii,_” Ordo cautioned. “Unknowingly plying your trade on a Sep isn’t a crime. Don’t get excited.”

Sev wouldn’t. All optimism was beaten out of him a long time ago, and he wasn’t sure he was sorry about it. Expectation only bred disappointment. Glancing at Fi, beaming out of the window as much as the city beamed in, Sev was almost embarrassed for him. What did he think was going to happen to them next? Whatever it was—and it wouldn’t be glimmik and games—was only going to be so much worse now. 

  


**Zellectric club, Theatre district, Coruscant Quadrant J-12, 2315 hours**

Ordo brought the speeder into a covered, crowded deck and parked it nose out. “Let’s move.”

“Hold on,” Fi said, groping deep into one of his pockets. He produced three white beads and held them out. “No one asked for them back, so…”

It was a smart call for the moron. They were relying on the club’s open floorplan to stay in contact, but hand signs might attract the wrong kind of attention. 

Ordo stuffed one of Jusik’s subvocal combeads into his ear. “You’re not listening in." He clicked off almost as soon as he’d clicked on and made a frowning fuss of Fi's offensive hat, turning it back-to-front before climbing out of the speeder. 

“Just call if you need us. Who knows how deep into my cover I’ll go.” Fi winked at Sev and Sev just shoved him out. 

As they weaved between speeders, instinctively falling into an echelon pattern, Sev started to rethink his choice of clothes. There weren’t many people loitering in the deck, but those that were looked ready for a party he hadn’t been invited to. He felt uncomfortably and obviously _clone,_ and not for the first time, he longed for the uniformity of the barracks. 

_Just a Null captain and his two dancing grunts. Nothing to see here._

He fingered the contents of his pockets to steady himself: two EMPs, a comlink, binders, and a credit chip—denomination unknown—that Skirata had slapped into his palm after the raid, with that fatherly condescension Delta really didn’t know how to parse. The Verps were also his. Sev was happier with those. 

Towards the middle of the deck, they fanned out. Ordo went for the front doors, and Fi and Sev were to make entrances out of the rear fire exits and sweep the ground floor and loft. Waiting out of sight for some employees to finish a spliff break, Sev could feel the music in his chest. It was never easy to pick out plants somewhere that people came to loiter, and this place would be like a cantina on glitterstim, with its press of bodies and its noise, but the general principles were the same: if anyone took too great an interest in someone settled in among barflies, watch their hands, read their lips, and send the waitress over with a drink. At least, that was Vau’s method; Sev didn’t mind just sitting on suspicious people and watching what came out. 

Once inside, Sev negotiated the warren of rooms at the back of the building carefully. He wore what he hoped was a good impression of a clueless tourist, in case management were working late. He had to chuck an EMP at a mouse droid that squealed at his approach, which was embarrassing, but he encountered nothing else. 

“Busy down here, _vod,_” came Fi’s voice into his ear. “Kitchen, changing rooms, staff freshers, unadvertised spice den. No one’s looked at me twice.”

“Probably ‘cause you look spiced.” 

“I mean, it’s just a shame, it’s like they see genetically perfect commando guns everyday,” Fi said, sighing. “Still. No bad guys, no unmarked exits, no weapons cache. Ordo’s probably in the green.”

"How disappointing.” Sev was approaching the more public area of the club. Around a bend in the corridor ahead, conversation and laughter burst and cut off as people cycled through the freshers. 

He palmed open the last of a series of small storage rooms. A sofa bisected the space, piled high with stale party decorations, and racks of cleaning products lined the walls. All clear. Moving on, Sev eased past drunk patrons onto the loft that overlooked a dance floor, heaving with bodies. Beyond it, at an oblong seafood bar that gleamed like freshly-issued plastoid, sat Ordo, still very much alive and alone and awkwardly clutching a tall glass of blue milk.

The strangest feature in the place was a chromium chute that bulged out from the far end of the loft and arced down, depositing the odd patron out onto the dance floor. If there was a quicker way to the ground level, Sev couldn’t see it.

Fi flared up in his ear again. “Whoa, that chute is _kandosii._ Where were those on Kamino?”

“In the back, where they sent the defectives. And you were _so_ close to getting to try it out.”

_“Di’kut.”_

A series of low, half-moon booths lined the balcony railing. Judging he could get the best angle on Ordo if he sat in _this_ particular one, Sev slung himself down just as a Chagrian couple were getting up. He decided not to care that he may have been glowering at them. 

For a few long minutes, Sev watched Ordo. He was struck by the impression of vital responsibilities left unfulfilled as one of Special Operations’ top assets sat there not drinking his milk; but whatever ARC Null-11 was supposed to get done as a captain in the Grand Army of the Republic, it was apparently getting done without much assistance from him. 

His stomach gurgled, prompting him to peel the menu off the tiny table and scan it for something crunchy. When he considered that he would have to interact with a waitress who _wasn’t_ Laseema, he panicked, and reckoned the salted ettel nuts weren’t worth the trouble. 

It occurred to Sev that the dancer might be actually dancing, sussing out Ordo from her own milieu. He’d have no way to tell. He just stared at the throng and decided, for the fifteenth time that week, that covert black ops were the pits and he’d go AWOL if one of Skirata’s brood ever took over his tasking again. 

The dancing was unlike anything he’d ever seen—and Scorch had subjected them all to his curation of Fixer’s stranger HoloNet findings from the time they could hold datapads. The crowd throbbed like a perforated organ, erratically and without concert. _Dha Verda Werda_ this was not. No one moved in relation to anyone else, except maybe their closest neighbour, and the movement there was more primal than practiced. 

Suddenly, Fi loomed over him, brandishing two brightly colored drinks that rivalled his shirt. He held one out. Sev didn’t take it. 

“You should be somewhere else,” Sev said. 

“You’ll look better with me on your arm. Less murdery, more smug.” 

“Two on overwatch is overkill.” 

“Two period is overkill. No one here is a threat. No one here is sober. They’re all laced up on stims or hormones.” Fi placed the the glasses on the table dropped himself into the other half of the booth like a crumpled invitation. 

For a moment, as Fi stirred his drink more times than was probably good for it, Sev thought he sensed Fi’s swagger tripping over his anxiety. Then Fi took a loud slurp, chased it down with a barmy smile, and turned the full force of it onto Sev with the charm of the truly confident. Or truly mad. 

“So, come here often, _ner vod?_” Fi asked affectedly. 

“Just drink your juice.”

“It’s a _Bug Blood,_ actually. Inspired by some SpecOps psycho with a kill count almost as high as mine. Ever heard of him?” 

Fi began toeing Sev’s boot. Nudge—nudge—nudge. Sev stomped down when he could ignore it no more. “Why are you like this?” he demanded. He _really_ wanted to know. 

“Why are you not?” Fi threw back the rest of his drink. He levelled another smile at Sev, this one more lurid that the last. “Show me where the bad _kaminii_ touched you and ten creds says I can make it all better. Trust me, I’m a medic.” 

“You’re a quack. Now shut up.” 

If Sev liked Fi at all, he liked him quiet. But without the chatter, without a knife-edge goal, without an objective beyond _make sure you don’t get flowered by that creepy waitress_, his brain began to idle dangerously. He didn’t even have the comfort of playing with the Verps in this very public, very civilian place. 

Sev just didn’t know what to do, now that he’d had his dick in Fi’s mouth. They’d been alone since—spent hours rolled up together in a ventilation shaft, in fact. But Sev hadn’t had time to think about it then; he’d crashed onto his bed, unspooled and spent, and Fi hadn’t even had time to brush his teeth. 

_I know because I was close enough to smell his breath._

A silent pact not to mention the affair sprang up between them that night, as if there wasn’t room to have a heart-to-heart while laying nuts-to-balls. Instead, Fi had been mercifully quiet as Sev grimly suffered a bout of indigestion. 

_I owe you._

That’s what he’d said to Fi, later in the lobby. What scared Sev more than anything—more than how close he’d come to dying, falling from great heights or from Vau’s grace; more than how much he wanted Fi to swallow him again—was what he’d almost said, reeling with painkillers and bone-deep relief. 

_I love you._

Sometimes, with the way Fi looked at him—_threw_ himself at him—Sev wasn’t sure he _hadn’t_ said it. Where had it come from? He found himself constantly watching his own six now, in case the feeling—and it was a feeling, not something rational, but something much, _much_ worse—crept up on him again. It was distracting. 

Sev jerked back, startled, when Fi snapped his fingers in his face. 

“What?” Sev said, with a perverse sense of vindication at being caught out. 

_See, I’m distracted now—and I’m not even hard!_

Fi tapped his straw in Ordo’s direction. “I said, maybe she’s stood him up.” 

“Good thing he’s got Agent Wennen in a holding pattern.” 

“You sound jealous.”

“No.” Sev wasn’t, not by a thousand parsecs, but he could see what Fi was doing: poking him into a corner. And he was prepared to let Fi poke him into Byss cheese before he’d let the _shab’ika_ inside his head. 

Sev tried to regain some kind of focus by picturing a reticle and tracking a square between Ordo, the front door, and the sides of the cavernous room. It was difficult with Fi twirling his vulgar hat in his peripheral, flashing like a damned neon sign—WHORE, WHORE, WHORE—and calling up a sophomoric stream of related words the sergeants used to call each other when they thought the sentry cadets couldn’t hear. 

On his tenth or twentieth pass, just as he was feeling a little cross-eyed and getting curious about Fi’s proffered drink, a red Twi’lek materialized at Ordo’s side. And something told Sev it wasn’t the Null’s animal magnetism. 

Sev hadn’t noticed her anywhere. She might have been just as cagey and discreet as they were, but he was inclined again to blame Fi, who was melting provocatively across the booth, because she was at least a head taller than Ordo and just as broad. She made the bar look like an error in units of scale.

“Well, that explains why he needed two of us.” Sev’s hand had found its way to one of the Verps, which he primed but kept hidden. 

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say he had a type,” said Fi, gawping. 

“What?”

“Coruscant’s Next Top Model.”

Sev’s eyes were as good as any, but it was hard to make out her features given the distance and the shoddy light. You never knew when you’d have to identify a body later. 

_That’s her alright, Sarge. Gorgeous girl. Like a polished brick shithouse._

Another one of Skirata’s delicate phrases, Sev reflected. He hated that he knew it. 

The snipers watched and waited for any sign of acrimony. The management didn’t know it yet —and neither did that waitress, from the way she kept ambling over and asking Fi if they needed anything, _anything_ at all—but they were the patrons from hell. If things did go sideways, Sev supposed he’d have to share one of his Verps with Fi; he’d noticed a few things beneath Fi’s sweats and none of them was blaster-shaped. 

_I wouldn’t be thinking about Fi’s ass on the range at Arca._

Sev would never forgive Skirata.

Ordo produced a small disruptor, presumably so he and the Twi’lek could begin talking shop. Sev wondered how he’d managed off-script with a random civilian for so long. Ordo was a contradiction—hypercompetent and adaptable, yet unable to shoot the breeze without someone eventually losing an eye. 

With a concealing shake of his jacket, Sev released the Verp but almost produced the binders instead as he shuffled away from Fi. _That’d be one way to teach him to keep to himself._ This music was really getting to him. 

“Not going to drink that?” Fi pointed at the second drink, which had slowly swallowed its own garnish.

Sev shook his head. “Headache.”

“It might help.”

“I wish I had my helmet.”

“Yeah, talk about a faceful of blinking lights and awful noises. Nothing like a butt-comm from Sergeant Kal and Enacca while they disarm a Dug to interrupt your morning HNE bulletin. To be fair, it was a dull news day.”

"A HUD is a finely calibrated system for a finely calibrated brain. This is just a stupid, skull-cleaving assault.”

“You know that’s why they don’t let us out—we’ll void our warranties.” As if to prove the point, Fi knocked back the second drink with a few long gulps and slapped his thighs. “Well, I don’t rate this playlist, but …”

To Sev’s confusion, he stood up and rolled over the back of the booth. 

“Fi. Fi. _Fi,_ you _di’kut,_ come back, don’t—”

_Don’t leave me._

But Fi did. He tucked his lower half into the chute’s opening, disappeared for a moment, and emerged feet-first at the bottom, scooting himself out on his _shebs_ like a kid, until someone from the throng grabbed his hand and pulled him upright. 

And Sev was left wondering when Fi had started to feel like a safety blanket.

Fi bounced stiffly through the crush of dancers, moved along by some current of collective mass and invisible energy. Sev watched him closely. He had a horrible vision of someone recognizing Fi as a clone. What if this place was full of Sep sympathizers, too? Even anti-war activists might take out their frustrations on him. What if they just didn’t like _meat cans?_

Forget the Verps: Sev would throw himself down. The crowd would break his fall, and an angry-commando-and-hard-floor sandwich might have some deadly results. He could almost hear bones snapping now. 

While this vivid fantasy played itself out in a corner of Sev’s mind—the corner where he could calmly count Geonosian wings and Weequay braids and Trando claws and still remain lethally alert—he tracked between Fi and Ordo, waiting for the captain to spot the moron and direct Sev to put a stop to it. 

Ordo never did. 

Fi had settled into a rhythm somewhat when two people pressed up against him from either side; one was a Theelin woman, and the other a human—gender indeterminate, but objective indisputable. They’d been taking notice of Fi, and Sev had been taking notice of them. Four arms started groping at him, fingers sliding up and down Fi’s chest and back and exposed neck in time to the beat. The Theelin was tall enough to slot her chin over Fi’s shoulder and she rubbed her facial horns sensually behind his ear, tickling out an absolutely enchanted look from Fi.

Sev, coiled on the edge of the booth, his fingers frozen around the binders he’d been toying, chubbed up under the thick gathers of his pants.

Then the human slipped a hand up Fi’s shirt.

Something inside Sev snapped, like a chemlight crunched under a boot.

He became both hot and cold, and a caustic sensation oozed from someplace brittle, right through his chest and into his gut. The feeling was strange and frightening. It hitched a ride on his insecurities, sending Sev into a tailspin of self-doubt and jealousy until he was back in that flooded sim room again: punched through the ribs by icy water that tumbled him over and over and over through furious currents, forcing him to drop his Deece if he wanted to live, and confronted by a hundred cadets, all clutching their rifles on the artificial shore of the observation deck, and Sergeant Vau— 

Sergeant Vau, who’d ignored Sev’s hoarse cries for help as he _held_ two cadets from Gamma squad. _Do better, Oh-Seven._

Sev had wanted to die. He almost did. But he never let go of things, anymore.

_Do better, Oh-Seven._

Sev jumped to his feet.

He thundered towards the back of the club and clicked his jaw hard to open the channel with Fi. “Fi, meet me in the corridor past the loft-level freshers.” There was no reply, no acknowledgement. “Fi. Do you copy?” Could Fi even hear him in that crush? 

Then came the audible click of someone joining the circuit. “Why?”

“Because I saw something, that’s fucking why,” Sev growled, not expecting resistance and unable to come up with anything better. He also couldn’t believe this bolshy breakdown of op discipline—just as he was about to shove it _all_ down the sluice.

“Okay, okay—” Fi’s voice trailed off into a giggle and the circuit closed.

As he picked his way back through the foot traffic around the freshers, Sev let that raw ache flow where it would. He was angry. His hand was numb from his death-grip on the binders. If Fi really was just what he said on the tin—an indiscriminate fuck, undone by a compliment, cash credits, the hollow promise of undying love—then Sev would at least get in there and linger on his brother, like the heat of a mean pepper.

His cock felt like a glowrod against the front of his cargo pants, dense and hardly subtle. Sev nearly moaned when he adjusted himself. He had to throw his fist over his mouth and close his eyes for a moment, concentrating on the chugging beat of the bass—if he’d opened them just then, he’d be in one of two places: a troop transport, engines sucking in air, or the back of a nightclub. The adrenaline was the same. Flip a credit.

_Couldn’t bone in a transport, though. Never even thought about it. What has Fi done to me?_

Fi rounded the corner. Sev allowed him a nanosecond of recognition, before flattening him against the wall with ninety kilos of muscle burning with fermented lust.

Fi squawked and struggled against Sev’s hold. “What the _shab,_ Sev?"

“Shut up.”

“What are you—"

“I said, _shut up,_ Fi. You yakking, mindless slut.”

That seemed to work. For a moment, Fi stilled. 

“Whoa. Save the bad-cop act for the dancer.” 

“No.” Sev squeezed Fi’s wrists into one hand and pulled the binders from his pocket with the other, flicking them open. He clasped them—eloquently, he hoped—around Fi’s bare forearms. “I think you need to see it too.” 

Sev hadn’t expected a standoff, and he also hadn’t expected to be half so bothered by Fi’s silence. Without the shitswinging bravado, Fi was almost unreadable. 

“But Ordo—” 

Sev bristled. He yanked his brother’s shoulders back, the better to give him an absolute earful. “What about _Ordo?_ Don’t tell me you haven’t told him. Don’t tell me your best bonkers buddy doesn’t know about us, like he knows about everything else. Like he knew about _my shoulder._ You’ve probably blown him too, haven’t you, you cocksucking drip.” Sev shoved Fi’s face back into the wall. “Tell me, did he promise to lift his skirt for you, or did he just need to shut your fruithole for a hot minute?” 

When Sev had finished and drawn breath, he realized it was his own heartbeat and not the house music now thumping through his skull. His adrenaline ebbed slightly, allowing a thread of cool reflection to worm into his thoughts. 

_Maybe I messed up._

It was as if he’d emptied his clip into a chasm, unsure if he'd hit anything and achieving little except reveal his position, weak and exposed.

Fi didn’t say a word.

Time stretched. 

Sev didn’t know what to do, like the akk that caught the proverbial speeder. Eventually he just rocked up gently against Fi’s backside, so he could feel his interest. 

Fi softened a little underneath him. “Oh, Sev ... you’re impossible.”

Sev didn’t care about possibilities or probabilities just then. The certainty he wanted—that Fi hadn’t done this with anyone else—confused him enough. Fi shifted his weight a fraction, just enough to slot Sev’s fat cock into the trench beneath his sweats, and then Sev couldn’t think about anything at all. Even what Fi said next took a couple seconds to scan. 

“You need to fuck me so hard that I forget Ordo’s name—and mine, too.”

Sev’s cock jumped at the suggestion, and his chest felt very buoyant, swollen like a boil. And it needed lancing, fast. “Done.”

With a jerk on the binders, Sev manhandled Fi into the nearest storage room and shoved him down along the back of the sofa.

Fi squeaked.

“Keep quiet,” Sev said, kicking Fi’s feet out to spread him wide. It was easy to lean into the bad cop again, with Fi trussed up like a snack, his pink shirt riding up under the binders to reveal a perfect dell of taut skin and strips of muscle laid out along his spine, the symmetry marred by a cheap, badly applied tattoo. Even that helped: it pissed Sev off. It reminded him, along with the blunt advertisement on Fi’s sports cap, exactly what he had pinned under his fist and against his thighs. 

Sev pulled Fi’s sweats down.

He accepted Fi’s expanded definition of _fun_ immediately. 

A _get’shuk_ strap—a tangle of indecent elasticene—framed a rich swell of commando ass, with Fi’s front-line-fit cheeks twinned like stuffed egg rolls between the bands. Sev could only imagine how tight Fi must be in the pocket up front. 

Sev’s cock quickened. He even squirted a little. He hadn’t expected to be so into this, for his own sake. His own ass must look more or less the same—and that of Scorch and Boss and even Atin, too. He tried to recall ever feeling this way, gob-smacked and feverish, about any of the hundred other brothers’ backsides he’d seen in his short life. He came up blank. 

_Does this happen to everyone? Is this what Darman and Ordo and Atin felt? They locked onto the first girls that stayed in range for more than five seconds. Will I lose my marbles if soft skin and tits spread with a smile for me?_

It was a rare thing for Sev to dabble in introspection, and an even odder moment to open himself up and weigh the contents. 

The explanation was laid out in front of him anyway, obnoxious and obvious. 

Sev wanted to bury himself in this crack—just like he’d wanted to lose himself in that mouth—because _Fi_ was waiting on the other side, simple as sin. 

But he wasn’t going to waste any more time ogling Fi’s ass like it was some installation in the Galactic Museum of Fine Art. He couldn’t. For all Ordo’s unconcern, he might comm any second— 

_The beads._ Sev hadn’t heard Ordo join his channel. That didn’t mean he hadn’t tuned into Fi’s. He leaned forward to fish the comm out of Fi’s ear. It wasn’t easy. Sev struggled with delicacy at the best of times. 

Fi squirmed. “Ouch! Hey—what are you doing?” 

“Removing your comlink.” 

“Why?” 

Sev hemmed. The explanation would make him look a bit fixated. 

Fi twigged it with a snort. “And _I’m_ supposed to be the one caught up on the captain,” he said, as Sev pocketed the bead. “You really think I get off on the idea of _Ordo_ listening to me bust a nut? Old with-respect-but-this-interrogation-could-be-done-better-please-hold-while-I-get-my-knitting-needles Ordo?” 

“Is this a joke to you?” 

“Am I laughing? Just don’t get me killed.” 

“No promises.” 

If Sev fucked the cocky out of Fi, he wondered what would be left for Fi to stand on—if he could stand at all. Sev had just worked himself up to fingering Fi’s cheeks apart, like he could possibly find another, more accommodating hole than the little dimple that puckered for him, when the door opened suddenly. 

It was bad manners to interrupt a hook-up, but it was pure bad luck to startle a commando. 

As it happened, Sev knew exactly what Fi had down his pants, and he’d been itching to touch it all night. His hand shot down Fi’s left trouser leg, and no sooner had his palm met beskar than the nasty end of the vibroblade Fi had holstered to his thigh quivered in the door casing. 

_“Get lost,”_ he growled. 

Someone—definitely, _thankfully,_ not Ordo—squealed, the door slid home, and their little room was private again. 

Fi whistled low in appreciation. “It’s no Jedi mind trick, but it’s heaps sexier. Let me see what else you can aim.” 

“Don’t have to aim to paint your guts. You just have to take it.” 

There was no more time to fool around. Sev had to commit before whoever that was came back, or went and cried to security. He loosened his trousers one-handed and shoved them down along with his briefs, and his heavy dick flopped free. It landed with a satisfying _plop_ onto Fi’s ass and flung a bead of precome onto his fake tat. 

_A Delta drooling over an Omega? Yeah, but Fi almost punched me in the face the first time we met, and now he’s about to go two-for-two on taking my cock. Still winning._

Gauging the angle, Sev shuffled Fi’s legs a little wider with his boots till he got his brother’s elevation just right.

He had only a very hazy idea of what was supposed to happen next: just an impression of tightness and warmth bestowed by imagination, the odd holovid, and various line sergeants who thought the commandos were a clutch of innocents and amused themselves during the odd joint-op by dispensing snickering and unsolicited advice. According to those jockeys, going up the chuff dry was _not_ recommended. Comparing his girth and Fi’s tight hole, Sev wasn’t sure it was even possible. They were supposed to be perfectly formed humans; he wasn’t accustomed to feeling cheated by his own body. 

“I’m ready to take it, so are you going to give it to me or what?” Fi whined. 

“You are _not_ ready—your asshole isn’t as loose as your fucking mouth. So for the umpteenth time: _shut up_.” 

Still, Sev hesitated, like a fucking coward, tension building under his skin until the urge to mindlessly thrust home warred with his nerves. Fi would never know how close Sev came right then to giving it to him bare, breaking ground with nothing but spittle and spite. But Sev wasn’t all bad cop, deep down. Especially not down there. _I want to do a good job._

Then he noticed the bottles. The racks held more than just detergent and bar cleaner; there were also some personal hygiene products. Bacta or medical jelly would’ve been too much to hope for, but Andrasha Estate Luxury Hand Cream would do in an emergency. If it had a little sting in the tail, well—better than the alternative. 

Keeping his boots between Fi’s, he reached sideways for a bottle. “Don’t move,” he growled with a shove to the binders. 

Sev squirted thick lines of lotion along his cock, twitching a little at the cool sensation. He dolloped up Fi’s ass too, and the faint whiff of choocanut made his mouth water as the lotion melted down his cleft. 

After slicking his dick up, and adding a little more so Fi could enjoy the sound effects, he probed the infil point with a forefinger. Fi was shaking, all twitchy, involuntary jitters like an idling engine. He stilled when Sev got a knuckle inside, but popped like a damn mine off the sofa when Sev’s fingertip nudged something hard.

“_Shab,_ Sev," Fi croaked. "Do that again.”

Sev didn’t quite heed this instruction, preferring to add a second finger and then a third, barely, while Fi made reedy noises into the upholstery. Things were looking promising. Sev pulled out and brushed his cockhead up his brother’s exposed taint. One pass was enough—just enough to focus Fi’s last brain cells right where he wanted them. 

“You done this before?” Fi asked, pitching higher than usual to Sev’s expert ear. 

The question hovered like a lucky fall in the crosswinds. And like any team setting up a particularly tricky shot, Sev told himself, it was good practice to parrot your spotter for clarity. “Have you?” 

“No.” It was toneless and therefore completely earnest, coming from Fi. 

Sev felt almost dizzy with relief. His blunt confession escaped on his deep sigh. “Me neither. So don’t move.” 

The angle was perfect. Sev poised his tip at Fi’s hole, which clenched a bit at the attention, and laid hands on Fi’s butt like he was asking for a small miracle. _Just let me fit._ It was simply a matter of leaning in, allowing his body weight to slowly—so slowly Sev thought he might dry up before the infil—push his broad, slick head inside. 

Fi's twitching kicked off again when Sev’s gathered hood caught on his pucker. Sev’s heart trembled at the intense warmth of Fi’s body, and his cheeks flushed deeper and deeper at the contact. Never in his violent life had he been this careful with another person. The thought was almost touching, but then he remembered that Fi probably would’ve done this with anybody. Sev wasn’t special, just first. He gathered the straps of Fi’s briefs in his hands with a snarl. 

Fi was going feel him through the next deployment, and well into the deployment after that. He was going to feel him in the freshers, when the rigging caught him on the next insertion, when sitting in the next troop transport, when straddling a branch. Fi was going to feel Sev in all three Rims, and if he got blown up, his last conscious thought would be _Sev tore me apart a long time ago._ He’d feel Sev in this life and the next, too, and the marching brothers would blush like maids to see him, if he ever caught up. 

Fi was going to leave this place having gotten more than he bargained for and then some. 

In one seamless motion, Sev pulled the straps taut, let them go, snapped in and bottomed out into Fi’s tight hole. 

It winded them both. Fi blew out through clenched teeth, a hiss that stretched into a gasp, and Sev had to brace himself up on Fi’s back to keep himself upright, his arms like beams quivering in a blast. He’d never felt anything as good as this. He might have stood there forever and never gone soft, skin on skin, brother to brother, so close in every respect that even a Jedi would have trouble discerning two clones instead of one. For a moment, he sank into the thrill of intimacy, drawn out of him by the slow lick of pleasure up his taint, up his spine, and up into the primal part of his brain the longnecks hadn’t been able to turn off and his sergeant hadn’t been able to stamp out. 

_Okay, okay, enough of this—I’m not going to tear myself up over this_ shab’ika _and catch his feelsy funk._

Sev prided himself on getting the job done, and now matter how incredible this felt, it would hardly be an exercise in self-denial to actually _fuck._

It had only taken all night, but Fi had gone very quiet, probably trying to come to terms with a large wedge of Sev where he didn’t belong. But when Sev edged back a little, it was like pulling the stopper out. Fi started babbling like he’d just discovered a sergeant’s most profane holonovel, one old Papa Kal would have burned.

“Holy _shab,_ Sev, holy _shabbing_ fuck, you feel so good—please—fuck me—Sev—please keep doing that, _that,_ just like that, yes, _vod,_ yes—_shaaaab_—shitting stars, you’re so beautiful, Sev, d’you know that?—the most beautiful—beautiful brother ever—Jango’d be fuckin’ proud—_Manda,_ fuck!—even the longnecks would be proud—watching you fuck me like a stim-grown animal—Kamino’s eugenic gift to clonekind—"

Sev’s hips pistoned hard into Fi, looking for a limit to Fi’s fortitude—or his lungs—and finding none. Fi just kept running his mouth and squeezing his _shebs,_ milking Sev’s cock up to a critical load as surely as if he’d been sucking him off. 

"—fuck me sideways, both ways, and upside-fucking-down—you bantha-thick _shabuir_—oh, stars, you’re fuckdamn right, Sev, I’m a cock-sucking drip—sweet _shabbing shab—"_

Fisting Fi’s backstrap with one hand, and leveraging against the binders with the other, Sev—Sev the Psycho—Sev the Weirdo—Sev the Screwy—pounded and pounded for himself and for squad honor. Primal instinct told him to bury himself in that void, that space he could still feel beyond the reach of his cock; but the meat of Fi’s ass stopped him, and there was no where for him to go. He wanted so badly to crawl inside this mouthy little shit and make him never forget that he’d been there, remaining in every crevice and every gaping hole. 

“—oh little gods and all their sacred shit, you’re—perfect, perfect, _perfect_—you’re gonna make me come, Sev—I wanna come for you—soak me good, _Sev’ika,_ I want your entire fucking load—_fuck!"_

Fi slowly widened around his shaft. Sev drew back further with every thrust, until it was just the end of him catching on Fi’s rim again. He discovered a new kind of bliss as his hood dragged over his wet cockhead and he felt the precome pinched from his tip. 

Scorch, Delta’s resident meatwhacker who thought shame only happened to other people, would sometimes jerk Sev off out of brotherly concern, but he’d never bared ass or shown the slightest interest in a quid-pro-quo arrangement. And no wandering hand in a bivvy sack was ever going to match the carnal give-and-take of Fi’s asshole. 

And they would be shipping out any day now. 

_Vau was right. This is why you shouldn’t have nice things. _

Sev was downright choking on embarrassing noises, but Fi continued his off-color commentary in full-throated ease, the cadence thrown off only by the occasional grunt or groan as Sev plunged into him. 

"—don’t hold back on me, you—you spicy fucker—Jango’s bones, you’re an amazing fuck—this is some military-grade dicking right here, best thing the Grand Army of the _shabla_ Republic has ever done for me—fuck the fucking factory settings right outta me, Sev, you wicked wonderboy—" 

_Where does he get this stuff? _

Sev was too close. He’d lasted a lot longer when Fi couldn’t talk for his cock on his tongue. 

“Shut up, shut up, shut up …” Sev panted, breathy and entirely unconvincing, because underneath the commando was a ten-year-old kid who’d never been told he was good enough and he liked how all this sounded. _Really_ liked it. 

It may have been outlandish. It may have been provoked. But someone was singing his praises, and between the confusion and disbelief that engendered was a bittersweet pain that made him tingly all over, like he’d showered in gylocal and the numbness was finally wearing off. 

The fancy lotion was also past its use-by date five minutes ago. His and Fi’s friction had moved beyond discomfort and into preventable injury. Sev eased his dogged pace and pulled out enough to squirt more on his cock, silently thanking the overlords of Andrasha Estate—wherever that was—for the fruits of their land, the sweat of their serfs, and their contribution to the war effort. 

Fi was having none of it, though. 

“—_nooo,_ Sev, don’t go easy on me, don’t slow down, fuck me like you _mean_ it—fuck me like a field op, brutal, dirty, and fucking endless—you’re gonna kill me, _vod_—I’m gonna thank you—_fuck!_—you empty your full clip in my ass now and I’ll—I’ll just suck another one out of you till you can’t—see straight to shoot—holy _shaaab_ you’ve got a cock on you—_fuck!_—you’re my favorite brother, my fuckdamn favorite, Sev—everyone’s gonna know it when I’m leaking your slick load on the barracks floor—” 

Sev had slowed, rolling into Fi like a creeping barrage, savoring the pull of his building orgasm. But Fi’s smartass flattery was communing directly with his cock, and when it spun the obscene fantasy of Omega—no, of _Gamma_ squad getting an eyeful of Fi’s quality ass marked _Sev Was Here,_ Sev went full throttle. 

Yep, he was going to blow. 

His balls clenched and he burrowed himself to the root, reaching up to grab hold of Fi’s shoulder. 

That prompted Fi to do a very stupid thing like try to get a glimpse of Sev behind him. 

Five seconds earlier, and the panic at being seen would have jammed Sev up good, the old shame at getting caught by one of Scorch’s snap junk-on-the-bunk inspections smothering all pleasure. His orgasm was too far gathered, now. Sev just twisted the brim of Fi’s hat, hiding himself from view, and was relieved when his climax overtook him. 

He came hard, jerking up onto his toes as his cock emptied into Fi and his thoughts blanked, his mind nothing but net behind his fluttering eyelids. Fi clenched up around Sev’s base, milking the last of him. Sev’s arms finally gave out. His thighs quivered like they were thinking about it too. 

Sev had transgressed and, for a moment, it was good. Blissful even, as he lay prone against Fi’s back, breathing full and deep. 

But it wasn’t long until Sev had plumbed the shallows of his capacity for intimacy, and he surfaced with a fierce need for space and mountains of food. 

Straightening up, he slipped messily from Fi. Sev grabbed a towel he hoped was clean from the rack and dried himself, before smugly wiping spunk off his brother. _There's more where that came from._ It could only be good for the undisciplined idiot: supplementing his shore diet of frozen sweets and spiked slushies with two healthy servings of Sev. 

Keeping Fi in an awkward control position with a succession of whiteknuckle grips, Sev pocketed the binders and himself, too. Everything had gone so nicely to plan—even Fi’s exposition on Sev’s winning qualities could be dismissed since he’d been under the influence of alcohol and cock—but Sev now worried what Fi would do when set loose. 

Like he was releasing an erratic akk, Sev shimmied back and let go, turning around quickly so he could grab the vibroblade stuck in the wall and bug the hell out. 

It took a second, no more, for Fi’s hands to snatch his. And above the scuffling of two stubborn commandos that followed, a voice in Sev’s head told him he’d have to always keep binders on his person now, so Fi couldn't paw at him like he was anything worth having. 

Fi grappled Sev to the door and pinned him there. “Look, I know you didn’t get top marks for teamwork in _kaminii_ kindergarten, but are you an actual savage, too,” Fi spat. His words cut across Sev with an edge that hadn’t been there before. He shoved one of Sev’s hands down the front of his sweats, illustratively, where he was bulging, damp and stiffer than Katarn.

Sev thought he’d reamed Fi hard enough; his high flattened a little to learn that he hadn’t. He jerked towards the door panel, testing Fi’s hold. “We’re out of time.” 

“Banthashit. I could cut kyber and you know it.” Fi pushed Sev’s hand against his erection again, demanding that he do something about it. 

Sev had stuffed his cock into Fi’s mouth, he’d thrust his cock into Fi’s _shebs_ as Fi was laid out before him, bare for the taking—but to hold Fi in his hands would reduce the distance between them to something undeniable. Sev’s deft fingers remembered a lot of things: the two-second configuration shifts of his Deece, the safety sequence on a det, the crunchy give of a bug’s three aortas beneath his gloved hand. He didn’t want them to have an intimate knowledge of Fi’s cock too, or he was sure it’d be painted all over his face for Scorch to laugh at the next time he cracked a tired joke about weapons maintenance. 

Sev clenched his jaw, battling with more than his own selfishness. 

_If he doesn’t need me, I can’t let him down. _

“Sev,” Fi prompted, as he dunked his face into the fur of Sev's hood. It was a wordless compromise not to look that met Sev’s willingness to do almost anything to get the out of that room. 

Fi was right, in the end: it didn’t take much to make him come apart. He was fully primed and did most of the work by frotting up into Sev’s palm. But each little thrust rubbed Sev’s knuckles against his own groin, and each thin moan called to his cock. At the first quake of Fi’s orgasm, Sev jerked his hand free and reached for the vibroblade. 

“Pull yourself together, _vod,_” he said. He slid the blade home in the holster down Fi’s leg and slapped the commbead into his brother's limp hand.

Sev’s overwatch booth was occupied when he returned. He still felt loopy enough from the fuck that he might have shared, but bliss didn’t sit well on him. This couple departed as quickly as one earlier. He dumped himself down, limbs a little shaky, and reassured himself that Ordo was still preoccupied with his large lady friend before he helped himself and his blood sugar to some leftover moss chips.

It was a while before Fi joined him again. He looked bloused and fresh when he did, very wide-eyed and bushy-tailed for someone who’d just been roundly fucked for the first time. Even his sweats were dry. Only the unnatural lines around his wrists gave him away, where Sev conceded he could’ve been gentler with the binders. 

“So. What’s next, _vod?_” Fi asked, sitting down in Sev’s half of the booth. 

“Chill down, probably,” Sev replied flatly. He knew it wasn’t the answer Fi was angling for. 

Fi, his face full of open, awful appreciation, squeezed Sev’s knee anyway. “They can’t chill me down. Not with you around.” 

The fallout of this latest misadventure was getting away from him. It needed to be contained. “Don’t, Fi. Don’t make it worse.” 

Fi’s face fell like a stone. _“Worse?”_ Then it hardened like one. “Stars, Sev. You're one _shabla_ piece of work, you know that? You’d eat a guy’s heart and hand it back to him.”

“We already talked about this.” 

“No we didn't, you slammed the door on it.” 

“Actions speak louder than words. You might notice, if you ever stopped yakking.” Sev stuffed some chips into his mouth, and even held the bowl out to his brother. But it was too late: Fi looked utterly deflated. Sev burned with the urge to shake him till that stupid bird on his shirt squawked. _See, you went and made it worse. You always want too much, Fi._ “I’m not some sweetheart to keep tucked inside your blacks. You keep looking back for someone, you’ll just get yourself killed—or worse, get your buddies killed.” 

The words were hardly out before Sev wanted to claw them back again. But he couldn’t. 

Fi didn’t even blink; he just bored a thousand-klick stare right between Sev's eyes, his words nothing more than the thin echo back. “Yeah, Delta’s too good for that, I hear. May all my dead brothers save you from drawing that long straw of life, Sev, so you don’t ever have to feel anything.” 

There were very few things that separated clones, really. They could joke about squad differences and idiosyncrasies, but losing brothers was another thing altogether. It seemed to shake loose something fundamental, like upending a stranger’s pack onto the floor: you could never quite get all the contents to fit again. Something was always off—just like Fi.

Sev broke away from his grim stare. But not before a devastating chain of hypotheticals and what-ifs was set in motion that would take some really violent mouseholing or a dirt-spitting firefight to cook off. What if they lost Boss? What if Sev got cut loose from the brothers that had been his whole world since they’d been dumped from contiguous jars into the same incubator? 

_What if they ever marched away without me?_

That one was easy: Sergeant Vau would kill him before he had a chance to sulk about it. Atin was only allowed to walk away as a cautionary tale—and probably because Iota hadn’t been worth the tears. Sev would be flayed and hung out to bleed dry for losing Delta, a _focusing_ example on the perils of distraction. 

Ordo’s voice suddenly broke in. “It’s your lucky day, _vode._ Hope you ate your Oaties.” 

Sev jerked forward. The Twi’lek was gone. So was Ordo. “She bolted?”

“No, she talked. Generously.”

Sev didn’t believe in deities any more than he believed in Coruscant’s fake starscape, but he thanked them all anyway, and ARC Captain Ordo, too, for delivering him from this Force-forsaken booth and finally bagging them some trade. 

“I never doubted you for a second, sir,” chirped Fi. “You make all the girls spill.” And just like that he was the cheeky brotherfucker again—blink, and you’d have missed it. 

“She likes your dancing, Fi. Imbecilic, but inspired. She signed on the dotted line and promised to host a rave, whatever that is.” 

“Fi’s just gagging for the invitation," Sev said, surging on a second-wind of adrenaline. "But less talk, more bang-you’re-dead. What's on offer?” 

“Meet at Bardan’s taxi. Two ladies are about to get one all-expenses-paid trip to Château Vau,” said Ordo.

“Tell Jaing to bill the Republic triple for my time,” Fi quipped. “These unsocial hours are doing a number on my dating life.” 

Sev couldn’t say why he did it. Maybe it was the way Fi looked away as he said that, all distant defeat despite his tone. Maybe it just occurred to him he might not get another chance. 

He grabbed Fi by the nape, brushing his fingers up under the brim of his hat and onto the tight shave at the base of his skull. He pressed their foreheads together. It was a special kind of Mando intimacy; Sev figured Fi would appreciate the gesture. 

_“Oya?”_ he said. It wasn’t a question, generally. It was an exhortation, a call to action, a verbal bucket tilt that confirmed you were in the game. Sev felt responsible for getting Fi’s head into this one. That glassiness in his dark eyes was chewing Sev's guts up bad. 

Fi closed them, blessedly, like he was centering himself. Then that mad tooka grin cracked across his face, all perfect teeth and mischief. And he nodded. _“Oya, vod.”_

Sev would have Fi’s six one more time tonight. That would be enough. It would have to be enough. 

**Author's Note:**

> A huge shoutout to kaasknot for the beta and to tiend for the inspiration.
> 
> All mistakes and any shitty takes are mine.


End file.
